While having a bit of a clear out, Cathy found this: the last print edition of the Yellow Pages ever delivered to us. I took a photo before we tossed it in recycling.
I was struck how the front cover shows the architect of the Yellow Pages' downfall, a smartphone.
Time was, every business had to have a listing in Yellow Pages. It was the first piece of advice given on enterprise courses to people seeking advice on setting up a business. We had one when we ran our own business, although nobody ever called us because they saw us there.
Businesses that relied on their Yellow Pages listing used all kinds of daft ways to be first in the directory - calling themselves AAAAAAAA111 Plumbing or so on. More successful businesses paid for box ads or half page ads or even full page ads. Spots on the cover cost thousands.
It was worth it too, because everyone had a Yellow Pages and almost everyone would use it to find a tradesman or check where their nearest branch of a given shop was. Yes, there were competitors, like the Thomson Directory, but Yellow Pages dominated the market, an ultimate authoritative information source and able to name its price to advertisers as a gatekeeper of information.
And then smartphones came along and killed that business model. They tried to pivot online as Yell but as search engines got better there wasn't any need for a directory website any more.
In their heyday, a Yellow Pages directory would have hundreds of pages. The final edition was a stripped down bare bones affair compared to the fat and satisfied versions in its pomp; the advertisers surely placing their entries out of habit rather than any marketing strategy.
Like other businesses that cornered their now-vanished markets, no-one misses Yellow Pages. It had a good run but the world changed far too rapidly for it to keep up. It's a warning to any hegemony - your reckoning time may come. Will you be ready?
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